What are the Leading Economists saying in response to the GOP's Call for a "Spending Freeze" ?

[FrenchieCat]

Boener was on "Face the Nation" this weekend touting a Spending Freeze.

Top House Republican calls for spending freeze
March 6, 2009

Boehner Still Touting Spending Freeze and Republican Alternatives on Budget Nonsense
By Heather Monday Mar 09, 2009 11:00am
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96OIV4O0&show_article=1

House Republicans Call for Spending Freeze
http://news.yahoo.com/s/realclearpolitics/20090224/cm_rcp/house_republicans_spending_freeze

What is the pushback by economists on this tact?
Have folks like Krugman commented on this renewed call for Spending freeze at this dire time?

[Hieronymus]

1. Look at how a spending freeze worked out for Hoover.

[FrenchieCat]

6. There are many Americans out there who would say Hoover Who?

That's a problem.

[louis-t]

2. No one has compared this to Hoover except

KO/RM. No one.

[FrenchieCat]

3. So in otherwords, the economists have yet to comment on this folly?

Do they assume that most folks believe it to be a bad idea already,
or are they waiting on the administration to go to bat on their own?

[louis-t]

10. They're waiting for admin to say something

so they can criticize it.

[Vinca]

4. I'll ask Pat Buchanan. MSNBC doesn't have economists on,

but Pat's there 24/7 so he must be some kind of wise man.:sarcasm:

[FrenchieCat]

5. That's part of the problem, isn't it? MSNBC and most of the other cable chatter channel cabals

don't much go for the economists' viewpoints.

[Median Democrat]

7. Krugman Hasn't Said Squat About This Or The GOP Call To Let The Banks Fail

Of course, Krugman will then sound bewildered and behind the curve as the Fox News and CNBC types start building momentum behind spending-freeze/let-them-fail right wing BS populism.

This is what we are missing. A discussion and comparison between Obama's proposals and policies and the GOP alternatives. Instead, the GOP alternatives get a free pass, while Obama's policies get trashed by the right wing and the left. Thus, the GOP's proposals end up sounding as the most reasonable.

[FrenchieCat]

8. You have hit the nail on the head!

Weird how no one notices as they post Krugman's Monday column in quatruplicate!

Krugman is still arguing the nationalizing of banks and the too small stimulus which
were last month's debates, and providing absolutely no rebuttal for the GOP's ridiculous
ideas put out on the Sunday talk shows with his Monday column! Talk about timing!

Perhaps he could also put out a couple of his next columns on what socialism really is,
as opposed to simply knocking the Obama administration for steering straight of Nationalization
for the time being!

[Marsala]

11. Yes, he has:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/party-of-uh-huh-huh-huh/

Krugman has commented on the total intellectual failure of the GOP. However, since the House Repukes are all but completely irrelevant at the moment, he is concentrating on the people with the power to actually affect the economy.

[FrenchieCat]

12. Too bad that was one of the shortest columns he has ever written.....

and one just as shallow.

Why didn't he feel the need to go into specifics economically wise?

It is obvious that Republicans are consistenly given a microphone, are all over the media,
and affect public opinion. Public opinion is part of the wheel that greases power...which leads to what actually can affect the economic recovery.

[Median Democrat]

13. Listening To Krugman, Perhaps The GOP Plan Is Better Because It Is The Cheaper Failure

In other words, Krugman seems to think that Obama's economic policies will fail despite the massive amounts of spending in the plan. Therefore, if the Republican plan of spending less and letting the banks fail is also a failure, why not embrace the cheaper failure?

[uberllama42]

19. Excluded middle

Just because Obama's plan is not enough does not mean that doing nothing would be just as good. Only the willfully ignorant would look at the situation that way. Most of the time trying to win over the willfully ignorant is a waste anyway. Krugman is not saying we're better off with no stimulus, and no intelligent person would read him that way.

[Median Democrat]

20. Intelligent Person? What about CNBC/Fox/Rush?

Ignoring them is risky, because it allows them to dominate the discussion with no actual analysis being given to Republican proposals, because the left simply fails to take them seriously.

[depakid]

15. Man, you must either not read much Krugman- oir have a short memory

He's gone over all that terriory before.

Most recently- with respect to spending:

What I learned listening to Larry Kudlow

Going on CNBC isn’t much of a time cost — the Princeton TV studio is in the basement of the same building in which I have my office, and I can keep working on class notes until 15 seconds before going on air. But it does mean that for the few minutes before going on I have to listen to the screamers.

And what I learned today was that Larry Kudlow has adopted the full Treasury View — the view that government spending can’t raise demand because every dollar the government spends comes at the expense of an equal amount of private spending. Presumably he’s getting it from Heritage. So the Conintern — the vast right-wing conspiracy — has settled on a misunderstanding of the meaning of accounting identities as the basis for its opposition to, you know, actually doing anything to prevent Great Depression 2.0.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/17/what-i-learned-listening-to-larry-kudlow/

[Cha]

22. Thank you, Median..all

Krugman does is snipe at Obama from his armchair.

[rvablue]

26. That's not true. According to another DUers, Krugman was on Shuster's show today

and said that a spending freeze would a total disaster.

[rockymountaindem]

27. Because the Republicans aren't in the position to do anything

It's easy to ignore their views when they have absolutely no power to get any of their initiatives on the floor. We can expect Obama's ideas to become reality, however, and therefore most analysis will probably be directed there.

[Kalyke]

9. Well, David Brooks did, but he's not a "leading economist."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/08/brooks-gop-spending-freez_n_172838.html

"They are stuck with the idea that government is always the problem. A lot of Republicans up in Capitol Hill right now are calling for a spending freeze in a middle of a recession/depression. That is insane. But they are thinking the way they thought in 1982, if we can only think that way again, that is just insane.

:shrug:

[depakid]

14. You've hit on the reason why- because it is insane

and no leading economist is going to do much more than roll their eyes at ideologues.

[FrenchieCat]

16. Gee! I hope that economists understand that in the real world,

Public opinion can sometimes embrace the insane.

If they don't understand that, then perhaps they need to get the heads out of their asses.

This is a crisis. This ain't the state fair.

Economist should all be vocally expressing their outrage then of such insanity proposed.

[rvablue]

28. Krugman expressed this on Shuster today, according to another DUer

who posted today that Krugman said a spending freeze would be a total disaster.

So, Krugman was out today on the teevees vocally expressing his outrage of the idea of a spending freeze.

[Median Democrat]

18. The Problem With This Approach Is That It Is Arrogant, Sets Up An Elitism Argument

The public is watching Fox and CNBC, and they are shell shocked at the numbers being proposed. Yet, both the left and right are attacking Obama's proposals without any rationale comparison with GOP proposals. Instead, all we get is rolling of the eyes from economists :eyes: who find it beneath them to address Republican proposals as serious.

Well, we just emerged from eight years of screwed up Republican policies, which should let everyone know just how quickly the voodoo economics we have dismissed can become the prevailing policies.

[depakid]

23. That's a problem with an unregulated media- not economic policy, per se

Fox and AM radio listeners aren't going to get the story anyway- no matter who, how often or how emphatically that it's stated.

It's also a bit like arguing with ideologues about evolution- or global warming. It legitimizes the irrational, and elevates it to a position of prominance that it ought not to have.

That said- I'm ALWAYS in favor of short and simple if not witty smackdowns of Republican stupidity....

[uberllama42]

17. E-mail him

If you think he has a responsibility to talk about these things, let him know.

[e-mail]

In the blog post cited above, all he does is roll his eyes and say the spending freeze proposal is actually dumber than what Hoover did. I you think that isn't good enough, feel free to ask him to write more.

[FrenchieCat]

21. Don't think that I haven't!

[camera obscura]

24. Krugman responds to Boehner: "That’s not a retrogression to Herbert Hoover; even Hoover knew better"

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/party-of-uh-huh-huh-huh/

[Median Democrat]

25. The Problem With This Is That It Is Nothing More Than A Snicker and A Snark

The fact of the matter is that if the GOP wins in 2010, Boehner's crazy ideas could become real policy proposals that the GOP can claim they have a mandate to implement ala Newt Gingrich in 1995. Krugman may not taken them seriously, but it will be at our nation's perils if we do not forcefully address the indiocy being spread as original conservative thought when it is just a re-hash of Herbert Hoover/George Bush.